HEY NASA - Might I Suggest A Terraforming Experiment?

I was recently reviewing several articles that had proposed different methods regarding the terraforming of planets such as Venus, Mars, etc. and thought back to methods I used in Sanacion III: Remnants of the Dome – the final installment in the series and thought hmmm, this isn’t really outrageous stuff, perhaps we should try this.

The first necessary step would be to pick a planet.

Now for reasons of claiming ownership or such perhaps such an attempt should be a worldwide mission and not country specific. Also some countries are the top at certain technology and others at another, it is the best way to have all the best of the best people work to the common goal! ... but back to the planet. Mars almost seems obvious, but there are already so many plans to go there and perhaps it would be best to use the methods once it works on another location then on Mars; so what other planets are there?

Actually, does it need to be a planet? Maybe a moon? Uranus has 27. Pluto isn’t a planet but it would do, of course it might present certain challenges. Go course from a layperson,the fact that it has five moons seems cool! Sure its surface is Ice – first frozen Nitrogen but then frozen ice and then rock. And after that there are other places we could try. Neptune offers many satellites. It has fourteen known moons. If we were to look to Venus it would be a tad problematic. Granted it is similar to the Earth in size and mass, density, composition, and gravity but its average daily temperature is 460 degrees Celsius (about 867 F) and likely any changes we were able to make would be quickly baked away. Probably better to heat a planet as cooling it down while maintaining an atmosphere might be too challenging.

Okay, so once we agree on where, this is an experiment that is likely to take twenty or so years, say 50-60 before the results are in, but while we are going to the Moon and planning for Mars and doing all these other cool explorer things, perhaps we could all work together at this on the side.

Oh and in Sanacion III – they change the gravity as well through the actual addition of mass... 

I recognize that each location would be different in atmosphere from either Methane and nitrogen, and perhaps carbon monoxide atmosphere or even an Ammonia compound such as NH3. AND depending on how the Rosetta mission goes, that data could be utilized for the planned crashing of a comet into where ever was chosen to jump start the changes. Not only could this work, but with all that is being done to destroy this atmosphere shouldn't we prepare a spare?

Anyway, NASA, what d’ya think? And if it all works out we could then do it on Mars.